The Hillsborough Independent Panel has not ruled out the possibility of criminal prosecutions over the deliberate distortion of junior police officers’ evidence, approved by the chief constable of the South Yorkshire force, which saw 164 statements substantially altered and comments unfavourable to the constabulary removed or altered in 116.

Two of
the four doctored statements revealed in yesterday’s Independent also feature
in the Panel’s detailed examination of a “review and alteration” process
undertaken by a senior South Yorkshire officer, Chief Superintendent Donald
Denton, and Peter Metcalf, a lawyer from the force’s legal representatives
Hammond Suddards, which left some junior officers deeply uncomfortable. Also
complicit in the process was the then chief constable of the force, Peter
Wright, who knew officers were concerned about the editing, the Panel’s
research shows. The South Yorkshire Metropolitan
Ambulance Service, whose own deep failings were an unexpected part of the
395-page panel report, altered 54 of the 101 statements produced by its own
staff the new inquiry report found. “There’s sufficient new
evidence that cries out for proper consideration for the proper authorities
whose job it will be to decide [if there are grounds] for a prosecution,” said
solicitor Raju Batt, one of the Panel’s nine members.

The
Panel’s chapter of evidence on the doctored statements showed that officers
were expressly told not to start recording their experiences in their pocket
books – the standard way of providing an accurate record. The amendment of
statements began when West Midlands Police and Lord Justice Taylor’s inquiry
teams asked to see them. Another senior officer integral to the amendment
process during the lead-in these inquiries was South Yorkshire assistant chief
constable Stuart Anderson, who said that “editing” the statements for the
purposes of the inquiry required the removal by solicitors of “conjecture and
opinion” leaving only “matters of fact.” ACC Anderson ordered that there should
be no “matters of impression” – though he did also insist that “no amended
statement will be submitted to West Midlands Police until it has been seen and
signed by the officer making it.”

Yesterday’s
Panel report details exhaustively the way the statements were changed – with
correspondence between the force and its lawyers stating that material
“unhelpful to the force’s case” would be removed. The most significant
amendments clearly altered the meaning of the original and in most of the 164
altered statements, the end result was to downplay or removed criticisms made
by officers about “police leadership or the response to the disaster.” The
doctored statement provided by PC Alan Wadsworth – featured in yesterday’s
Independent – is one of those the Panel focuses on. As this newspaper has
reported, PC Wadsworth’s declaration that “there was no leadership at the
Leppings Lane End following the disaster, either in person or on the radio ”
was removed. PC Martin McLoughlin’s description of the “note of real fear and
panic” from a fellow officer also featured in the Panel report.

The
Panel observed how references to ‘panic’ were frequently removed. In total, 23
officers had references to ‘chaos,’ ‘fear’, ‘panic’ and ‘confusion’ altered or
deleted from their original recollections, while five had references to ‘chaos’
deleted. The Panel chronicles a short undated note later issued to officers
with guidance on how to complete statements. It states that “no CRITICISMS”
(the force’s capital letters) should be “levelled at anyone in the text of your
summary.” Furthermore, there should be “no mention of the word CHAOTIC (force’s
capitals) or any of its derivatives which would give rise to the assumption
that complete control of the ground. These requests were the “express wish” of
a Detective Inspector King.

Curiously, statements which criticized Liverpool fans were amended in 33
cases and though the Panel does not offer a rationale, it is the intemperate
language, calling Liverpool fans “animals” and a “drunken rabble” which was
crossed out. The Panel report concludes that Lord Justice Taylor and Lord
Justice Stuart-Smith, who conducted a scrutiny of the Hillsborough evidence,
were wrong to say that the doctoring of evidence did not affect the course of
justice. The role of the South Yorkshire force’s solicitors was also deemed
more significant and “directive” that Stuart-Smith had appreciated.